When presenting an image on a display, shading is typically provided to indicate a direction of light applied to a viewable surface of an object represented in the image. For example, when viewing a real object in an actual room that is exposed to light from outdoors, such as table near a window, the ambient light on the table typically changes. The changes in ambient light on the object creates shadows and provides depth to the object. A video of the object in the room will capture the changing ambient lighting. Similarly, when presenting an image of a virtual objects on a display, graphic designers, photographers, and videographers aim to provide the most realistic representations of the objects in the image, including shading and shadows. In the graphic arts, the appearance of a computer generated object may be manipulated using software. Digital photographs and video images may also be augmented using software programs to achieve a desired, such as realistic, appearance of an object in a digital photograph or video. For example, a presented image may be selected from images of luminaires, landscapes, sky scenes, other real world scenes, graphic object, an animation, an art installation, a video (i.e., series of image frames), a video segment or the like.
However, of particular interest to the subject matter described herein is the manipulation of the lighting of a scene or object. Different software applications, such as Valve Software's Source Engine, provide rendering techniques that allow for fast and efficient static lighting in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment. Typically, these software applications are confined to the capture of simulated light from a ray tracer, and not the capture of characteristics of illumination from real world sources. In a gaming software development environment, the game scenes are known apriori or may be constructed based on predetermined positions of sources of light. The software applications may be intended for static lighting, and are not typically responsive to real-time lighting conditions, where the light environment can change.